Odie Apartments

Odie Apartments is on a corner lot in the vibrant Whittier neighborhood of South Minneapolis. The new development replaced two deteriorating buildings on two separate lots with a new six-story multi-family apartment building on a combined lot. One of the biggest challenges for this project was achieving 67 units, amenities and 40 parking stalls on about 1/3 of an acre in a dense urban neighborhood. The project is innovative in its approach to providing maximum parking in a tight footprint. This was necessary to take the impact off of already limited neighborhood street parking and provide safe and secure parking for over half of the building’s units. An enclosed parking garage includes space for 23 additional vehicles in an innovative car stacker system that was the first of its kind to be working in Minnesota.

The building has many features that make it desirable for pet owners and worthy of its namesake. The pet friendly community room, dog run and obstacle course on the ground level provide opportunities for pet owners to give their pets exercise while congregating with their neighbors. The pet theme is carried through with oversized framed photos of pets in the residential corridors. The community room was also designed as a maker space with plentiful workstations and personal storage lockers to support remote work or hobbies. The exterior appearance of the building is broken up by a distinct color palette of charcoal, white and curry gold that was inspired by industrial imagery as a nod to this maker space.

One other distinctive feature of this project is the large top floor units with spacious walkout decks that all have amazing views of downtown Minneapolis. There is also a community deck for all tenants on the top level that has views to downtown and the Midtown Greenway to the south. The roof over the garage doesn’t have the views but was utilized as a green roof to help manage stormwater on the site.